Charisma

Developing a personal vision

Many people whom we recognise as being highly charismatic are on a dedicated quest to achieve a vision that
stirs and evokes attention. This vision is often far bigger than they can realistically achieve, yet it is
compelling. This creates an intensive force field around the individual that begins to act like a giant
magnet.

If an individual does not possess a ‘huge’ vision, they can still replicate this force field by
employing ‘directed intention’. This means that individuals first start paying attention to
their thoughts before deliberately directing them towards what they want to achieve. This phenomenon is
widely referred to as the Law of Attraction.

Imagine yourself as a magnet. You contain a magnetic power that transmits your energy at a certain frequency.
This then attracts similar frequencies back towards you. For example, if you are feeling negative, you’ll
attract more negativity. If you are feeling happy, you’ll attract more happiness. Individuals who
possess complete and utter clarity about what they want will ultimately attract what they want.

The vital importance of goals

This principle relates equally well to the achievement of your goals in any context, including your own
career goals. One of the most important skills that a charismatic manager can possess is to set goals that
are so well defined and so compelling, that they become embedded deep into the unconscious mind,
consequently acting as a powerful force that drives motivation and behaviour.

Every thought of yours is a real thing – a force.

Prentice Mulford (1834 – 91)

If your team lacks clarity about why they are doing their job, their sense of purpose will become diluted
and, as their manager, you are losing out on a massive piece of their potential. The art to achieving
whatever you want is to have a clear picture of your goal in your mind.

You’ve probably heard this so many times before that the power of this one thing may have escaped you.
According to Prentice Mulford (1834-91), ‘Every thought of yours is a real thing – a force.’
To put it another way, thoughts become things.

We are all connected to each other and the universe through our energy, which ebbs and flows constantly. In
fact, we are like a powerful electro-magnetic transmitter: our thoughts vibrate at a certain frequency and
attract to us that of which we are thinking. In his bestselling book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon
Hill states, that ‘the subconscious mind proceeds to translate that impulse into its physical
equivalent’.

Yet the mistake made by many people is that they don’t think about what they want; they think about
what they don’t want. The human mind is unable to deal with negations, such as ‘I don’t
want to miss target’ or ‘I don’t want to get this project’. In these examples, your
unconscious mind will create ‘miss target’ and ‘get the project’. If you are asked
not to think of a blue tree then your mind has already started thinking of a blue tree!

Therefore, when helping your team set goals for themselves, they need to focus on what they want, rather than
what they don’t want. The clearer people are about their goals, the more leverage they create, because
they start to attract them at an unconscious level. This means that having a picture of their goal and
imagining how they will feel achieving their goal can be extremely powerful. Having goals and well-formed
outcomes will stretch and develop your own ability and that of your team, keeping everyone challenged and
motivated.

Smart goals

Give your team the time to identify and write down what they want, which is the first step to creating a SMART
goal.

SMART stands for:

Specific – because it becomes more real when you are detailed. Imagine concentrating
the rays of the sun using a magnifying glass into a force powerful enough to start a fire. This is exactly
what happens when you are specific about your goal, because your power to achieve it becomes more focused.

Measurable – if you have been very specific about your goal, then you are going to
find it much easier to know when you have achieved it. If there is no way of knowing what you have achieved
then it’s vital you develop a way.

Achievable – having the faith and the belief that your goal is stretching, yet
realistic, generates more clarity, drive and determination. This in turn empowers the goal-setting process.
If your goal is so big that you genuinely believe that it’s impossible, even though it’s what
you want, your unconscious mind will hold you back because it wants to preserve your energy from being used
unnecessarily.

Relevant – sometimes it can be easy to set ourselves goals that are not really our own
goals; they are the goals of others who have influenced us to think that we should want them too. If our
goal doesn’t have any real relevance to us, then we will find it difficult to form an emotional
attachment or connect with that goal.

Timed – people often find that if they have a certain amount of work to be done within
a specified timeframe, they will then take the allotted time to complete their task. You may have noticed
that when you are busy you tend to get more done. Sometimes, if we have less to do and there isn’t a
deadline to do it by, the tasks can take longer. Setting a time within which we want to achieve our goal
works in much the same way and is a vital component for our own motivation.